


Desolation

by DT Maxwell (Draya)



Series: Our Blades Are Sharp [34]
Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, Blood, Despair, F/M, Rise of the Emperor, Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, Threats of Violence, Ziost, Ziost spoilers, it also includes massive amounts of my personal headcanon regarding many things, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:16:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draya/pseuds/DT%20Maxwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past week had been one of the worst and one of the longest of her life. And then the darkness and suffering reached an unthinkable apex, and all that remained after was emptiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desolation

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted to my tumblr this morning.
> 
> I've been sitting on and thinking about a Ziost reaction fic since the patch went live. Considering there was no content between that patch and the upcoming early access launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire, the lackluster in-game reaction to the events of Ziost left a really sour taste in my mouth. This is my attempt to address it, because oh my God, a major Imperial population center was effectively under siege and then got _dead,_ and you expect me to believe that everyone was "ho-hum, business as usual"? Yeah, no.
> 
> ...All right, I promise, no more venting. Onward to the story!

Darth Makhaira winced as she swallowed another mouthful of caf. It was bottom of the pot and not even obscene amounts of cream and sugar could stop her hairs from standing on end, but it was enough to help keep her awake after thirty-six hours on her feet.

The sounds of the _Sneak Thief_ ’s bridge were subdued even after the change from cresh shift to aurek; most of the officers and technicians and Sith were hunched over their stations with their own cups of caf or tea at their elbows. Captain Rialta Tento was at the holo-receiver, coordinating with the holographic figures of the captains of the _Bloody Flag_ (newly returned from Dromund Kaas after disgorging refugees and artifacts) and _Dark Heart_ (frantically stripping and spacing all unnecessary gear and equipment to fit as many people into its hull as possible before it made its own mad dash for the throneworld). And visible in the viewport was the planet they slowly orbited, oozing pain and malevolence through the Force.

Makhaira stared at Ziost, too damn exhausted to even dredge up the fury that had sustained her during this entire disaster, as she thought back on the last week.

\--

_Then_

The _Sneak Thief_ had arrived in system as part of the first wave of responders to the distress signals coming from the old capital. As elements of the Fourth Fleet moved into position over New Adasta, sending down troops and trying to coordinate with the evacuation shuttles, _Sneak Thief_ and her fellow _Gage_ -class transports assigned for the use of the Imperial Reclamation Service, _Bloody Flag_ and _Star Hunter_ , began trying to raise the RecServ and Sphere of Ancient Knowledge personnel on the ground.

After the confirmations fed to her by Minister of Sith Intelligence Lana Beniko via the fleet, as well as a first-hand report from Darth Alterius, her Assistant Director in Charge of Ziost Operations, of the presence of their mad Emperor, Makhaira ordered the removal of the most dangerous artifacts they had in the vaults and museums on the planet, plus the evacuation of all RecServ and Sphere personnel and their families.

“I don’t want our _beloved_ Emperor getting his metaphorical claws into those artifacts,” she said during the conference holo. “The less potential batteries of energy he has, the better. And if the ghosts give you lip, ask them if they _want_ to be eaten.”

Darth Alterius chuckled and nodded his agreement. Makhaira then turned her attention to her captains.

“Captain Tento, _Sneak Thief_ will be the command center for our evacuation operation, so we’ll need to stay in orbit as long as possible. As such, we’ll take most of the less dangerous artifacts. The holds will be a mess, but messes can be cleaned later,” she said. “And set aside one of the vaults as a secondary medbay and get as many medics off-planet in the first waves as can be spared. _Sneak Thief_ will also be our primary triage ship for the worst casualties.”

To Captain Perin Havar, she said, “ _Bloody Flag_ will take some artifacts, but your priority will be personnel and families. Make as much room as you can, you are going to squeeze as many people into your hull as possible before you make the jump to Dromund Kaas.”

Then to Captain Uluroli’no’thoro, Makhaira said, “ _Star Hunter_ will take the most dangerous of the artifacts and their Sith minders and get to Korriban as fast as you can manage. Alterius, send your Second with them, she’s good at bullying the Academy overseers into getting their heads out of their asses and doing their fucking jobs. Uluroli, Havar, once your holds are empty, get back here _immediately._ Do _not_ let any other Sith try to order you to some other mission, and that goes for you, too, Tento. Throw my name around, and if they continue to give you lip, throw Marr’s name around, too. I will handle any fallout once this clusterfuck is over. Our priority is to get our people to safety; _nothing_ is more important right now. Understood?”

“Yes, Dark Lord!” all three captains said, snapping salutes.

Makhaira nodded. “Good. Alterius, stay in contact with the communications officers on our ships, you’re in charge of coordinating what’s going on dirtside. May the Force serve us well. Dismissed.”

As the holocomm had shut down, Makhaira turned on her heel and strode out onto the bridge. “Captain, get every RecServ ship in Imperial space on the line,” she barked. “I don’t care if they’re on long-term missions or in dry dock, they are to drop everything and get to Ziost _now._ ”

“Aye aye, Dark Lord!”

A day later, _Star Hunter_ had been moving out of Ziost’s gravity well in preparation for the jump to hyperspace, while the crew of the _Bloody Flag_ were cleaning out rooms and jettisoning extraneous material in a desperate attempt to find more space for refugees before the ship left for Dromund Kaas. _Seeker’s Blade_ and _Dark Heart_ had been two and three days out, respectively, and Makhaira thought they’d begun to get a handle on the chaos.

And then _Sneak Thief_ ’s alarms began _screaming._

“Captain, there’s a Republic fleet exiting hyperspace on the edge of the system!” Lieutenant Karse at the tactical station yelled over the blare of the alert.

“Mother of _fuck,_ ” Captain Tento said as she ran over to look over Karse’s shoulder. She pressed a button, and a holographic representation of the star system had sprung into existence in the middle of the bridge. The red dots representing the Republic fleet stood out against the cold wash of color of the bridge, with the computer readouts estimating its arrival in three hours.

Makhaira stared at those dots for five heartbeats, her expression contorted into absolute _rage._ Her two aides on the bridge at the time, Lord Talisa and Lord Imnola, took two large steps away from her.

And then the bridge actually _shook,_ before the Dark Lord visibly reined in her fury, her expression turning blank.

“I am going to kill Supreme Chancellor Saresh,” Makhaira said quietly, but in the sudden dead silence of the bridge, her voice nearly echoed. “I am going to go to Coruscant, and drag her before the Senate and every Holonet camera on the planet, and I am going to _skin her alive._ ”

The quiet lingered; the crew were spooked and wide-eyed, frozen in place, while the officers wore expressions of grim approval and the Sith ones of delighted, vicious interest. Makhaira had given the holographic readout one long last glare and then had murmured, “Later.”

As the tension slowly bled away, the darth turned to the tactical station and said, “Captain?”

“Stealth systems are engaging and we are beginning maneuvers to bring us into orbit around the southern pole,” Captain Tento said as she read the reports filtering in. “The Republic fleet’s current trajectory has them engaging with the Fourth Fleet around the northern hemisphere over New Adasta. _Star Hunter_ will be out of here by the time the Pubs arrive, and _Bloody Flag_ is engaging sublight engines and following us down to the south pole. She doesn’t have the new sensor scramblers installed, yet, but _Seeker’s Blade_ and _Dark Heart_ do, so they should be able to sneak into the system without trouble so long as they stay beneath the ecliptic. Havar’s already reporting he’ll take the long way out of the system to avoid the Pubs.”

“Excellent,” Makhaira said. “Comms, get me Darth Alterius, we’re going to have to figure out how to get the New Adasta shuttles south through Republic flak and brainwashed gunners before they can break atmosphere.”

“Dark Lord, may I suggest a route through the Ziost Abyss?” one of the other tactical lieutenants said.

Darth Makhaira strode toward the lieutenant’s station and was joined by Captain Tento. “Show me what you’re thinking,” the Sith said.

\--

_Now_

She drained her caf cup and set it down on the edge of the console with a quiet thunk. Even when the Republic fleet eventually pulled out, the evacuation continued to be a clusterfuck as Imperial and Sith forces on the ground struggled to limit Vitiate’s insidious influence. Most of the people coming aboard the ships had electrical burns from the attempts to get the Emperor’s presence out of their minds, but, well, Imperial medics were…used to those, at least.

Phae groaned quietly as she picked up a datapad and started skimming the reports about the ETAs of the RecServ ships and coordination with the Navy proper. She should probably at least attempt a nap in the one of the crash rooms the Captain had ordered set up just off the bridge. The cots were uncomfortable as fuck, and she couldn’t use Andronikos as a pillow since he was on the _Sekhmet_ still racing across the galaxy from Ilum (with the _Salt and Burn_ and _Fel Speaker_ alongside), but she was exhausted enough she probably wouldn’t care once she was horizontal.

She squinted down at the datapad, picking up a stylus and making a notation to contact Commodore Yassani and Captain Aurek to see if they couldn’t use any of the displaced Ziost personnel. The only RecServ ship not either on route to Ziost or away from it to one of the evacuation sites was the _Sands of Korriban._ The RecServ flagship was acting as the orbital command center for the Krayiss Two dig, and that included acting as security against anything non-Imperial that entered the system. The teams dirtside could _not_ be left defenseless, and so the flagship stayed put. Thankfully, Krayiss Two was the only current long-term dig that required a permanently-assigned transport ship in orbit; every other current active dig was small enough to manage with only a few squads of infantry, plus light freighters and shuttles to move relics and personnel as needed.

Nine Hells, it was _definitely_ time to take an extended nap if the only thing her brain could focus on was the obvious.

Phae set down her datapad and turned to catch her aides’ attention. Lord Imnola, a towering female Pureblood, was currently bending over a workstation calculating potential storage capacities for the inbound _White Sleen_ and _Empty Night,_ both just ten hours out after a week-long hyperspace jump from the far Outer Rim. Lord Talisa, a tiny half-Rattataki ex-slave with the strongest empathic and telepathic abilities in the Sphere, had a faraway look in her eyes as she engaged in a four-way mental conference with Lord Opreth on the _Dark Heart,_ Darth Geist on the _Bloody Flag,_ and Darth Alterius’s aide, Lord Rali, in Terras City on Ziost’s equator.

It generally wasn’t a good idea to startle Talisa out of a telepathic conference. (It wasn’t a good idea to startle Talisa _at all,_ honestly.) With that in mind, Phae made to go over to Imnola to tell her where she’d be and from there find an empty cot to crash in for a few hours of sleep.

The Force suddenly prickled at the edges of Phae’s senses, practically vibrating, and she immediately stilled, tense and wary as the vibrations worked toward a crescendo. Imnola stilled as well, and she saw Talisa, too, out of the corner of her eye.

All three Sith slowly, simultaneously turned and stared up and out the bridge’s transparisteel viewport, at Ziost slowly rotating above them.

One of the technicians called out from her station, “Dark Lord, Captain, I’m picking up a strange energy reading from Ziost, just northwest of New Adasta – ”

The crescendo finally broke, and the Force _howled._

Phae shouted…something, she wasn’t sure what, as she threw up every mental shield she had. Her shielding, however, wasn’t enough to completely block out the tidal wave that hurtled through the Force and slammed into her.

Confusion. Panic. Terror. _Agony._ And then horrifying _nothingness._

And she felt it again.

And again.

And again.

And again and again and again and again again again again again again again again again againagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagaina _gainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainagainAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAIN **AGAINAGAINAGAINAGAIN**_ –

Distantly, Phae felt herself sway, then drop to her knees. Heard someone – Imnola? Talisa? Herself? – screaming, shrieking, _wailing_ in pain and fear and grief.

And then Phae forgot about the physical world entirely as the Force convulsed and Ziost died.

\--

“Dark Lord? Dark Lord? Darth Makhaira, can you hear me?”

Phae groaned and slowly cracked her eyes open.

“Oh, thank goodness. Darth Makhaira, my scan shows you’re not physically injured, so I’m going to help you sit up.”

Phae grunted, eyes falling closed again, and felt one pair of hands grip her right shoulder and upper arm, then one another pair be wedged beneath her left shoulder and the middle of her shoulder blades, before she was slowly leveraged upright. She groaned as blood suddenly rushed out of her head and vertigo briefly lashed through her.

Someone pressed a cup into her hands, and Phae lifted it to her lips, groaning again at the feel of cool water lapping gently against her lips. She carefully sipped and swallowed, and as she did, slowly opened her eyes again, squinting out onto the rest of the bridge.

Captain Tento was fielding frantic reports from all stations, her eyes wide and face pale as she shouted orders. The crew was doing their best to keep from outright panic, but Phae could still feel it, barely leashed beneath disbelief, raw grief, and horror. Two medics had Imnola propped up against the side of a console, one checking the Pureblood’s vitals on a scanner while the other held a bucket that Imnola was retching and dry heaving into.

And Talisa was being carefully transferred to a stretcher, mouth still open in a silent scream even after her vocal cords had apparently given out, silver eyes wide and unseeing, her chest and the lower half of her face covered in gore from a bleeding nose. Talisa, who’d been in mental contact with three other Sith, and had no doubt felt Rali’s death, and had felt that death and every other on Ziost _threefold_ through her own powerful senses and the feedback from both Opreth and Geist, if the shock hadn’t severed the connection entirely. _Sneak Thief_ ’s CMO, Lieutenant Commander Tomas Haggerty, was barking orders into his comm as he and two more of his medics raised the stretcher and rushed Talisa off the bridge.

Phae lowered the now-empty glass and handed it off to Lieutenant Karse on her right. She slumped forward. “Sweet fuck,” she slurred, resting her head in her hands.

“Dark Lord,” the medic on her left – ugh, she couldn’t remember her name – said, “while your scans are showing up normal, I would recommend going to the medbay for a more thorough scan considering your, um, current – ”

Phae _snarled,_ low and raspy, without raising her head.

The medic shut up so quickly her teeth made an audible click.

Phae rubbed her face and raised her knees, bracing her elbows against them. She ached; not physically, but deep in her soul, not helped at all by the emotions running rampant across the bridge and the rest of the ship, so strong that her shields were doing absolutely nothing even with her senses pulled in tight. She dropped her hands, then, and raised her head, to stare at the desolate gray rock that was once Ziost and was now a gaping wound in the Force.

She felt too numb even to hate.

\--

Two days later, Phae was sitting on a rocky ledge that overlooked where the University of Ziost’s flagship campus had once been. She sat lotus-style, elbows braced on her knees and fingers crossed, mouth pressed against her fingers as she stared out across the wasteland. The only sound was the mournful whistling of the wind through the canyons newly blasted-free of ice, and the far off roar of one of those monolith monstrosities mentioned in Minister Beniko’s report.

The high-pitched whine of sublight engines broke the monotony, followed by the short bursts of grav thrusters firing for a landing sequence somewhere behind her. Phae didn’t need to turn or reach out through the Force to know it was the _Sekhmet._

There was the gentle rumble of the _Sekhmet_ making a soft landing, and then a few minutes later, the gears of the landing ramp hissing. The clatter of a pair of leather boots echoed off the metal of the ramp before it was muffled by fine dust.

Andronikos sat next to her on her left, letting his legs dangle off the edge. He held up his right arm, and Phae blew out a long breath as she dropped her hands into her lap and leaned into his side.

“So,” her husband said. “Shitty week.”

Phae snorted. “Yep,” she said, popping the ‘peth’ at the end.

“How you holding up?”

She sighed. “I’m fine. _We’re_ fine,” she said, gently patting her flat stomach.

Andronikos kissed the top of her head. “Figured that, Sith, or you wouldn’t be down here. Not what I was asking.”

Phae blew out another breath and spared a moment to be annoyed. Her pirate liked to pretend he was just the dumb muscle, but he’d always been very good at reading her – once he’d gotten the vengeance out of his system on Tatooine, anyway. But she could _talk_ to him, without judgment.

“Honestly?” she said. “Not well. We were evacuating this planet for over a week and the casualty list is still in the tens of _millions._ I spent most of the past two days over on the flag of the Fourth Fleet in conference calls with the rest of the Dark Council. Logistics was _headquartered_ here; Vowrawn’s trying to keep his own Sphere from imploding and taking the rest of the Empire with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man so exhausted.”

She sat up and rubbed her temples; Andronikos moved his hand to lightly grip the back of her neck, massaging gently.

“Talisa’s in a coma,” Phae continued. “By all rights she should be a _vegetable_ after the psychic backlash, but there’s no telling when she’ll wake up, and no telling if she’ll still be sane. I’ve lost more friends and colleagues than I can count. In my head I know there was nothing I could have done, at the end, but they were _my people. My_ responsibility. It was my job to get them and their families to safety and we’re still trying to figure out who was still on planet when it all went to hell.

“I felt Ziost _die._ I felt fucking Vitiate _eat every living thing on this planet._ I felt him eat every _dead_ thing: he sucked even the fucking tombs dry. There is _nothing left_  - no ghosts. _None._ Not even a _whisper,_ and two days ago I would have told you that was impossible, that people dying in pure terror and ghosts sustained by centuries of hate _had_ to leave some impression on the Force around them. Ziost is dead in every sense of the word. Vitiate turned this world into a fucking _abomination._ ”

She practically spat out the last word, rage and hatred and grief turning her voice into a hoarse snarl. She had yet to cry, and she didn’t intend to, not until she was safe at home on either Nar Shaddaa or Tatooine with her husband and daughter.

(There was supposed to have been a new museum opening in Terras City this week, and she had promised Xalla that she could attend with her, and she was going to stop that line of thinking _right now,_ because at the moment, the very idea of Xalla anywhere near Ziost was enough to induce a panic attack she could not afford to have.)

Andronikos gathered her into his arms, and that was when Phae realized she was shaking. Her husband didn’t say anything, just held her and ran his hand up and down her back as she took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out again slowly, repeating the breathing exercise until she had regained control of herself. Once she did, Phae slumped boneless against him, pressing her forehead against his chest.

“I am probably going to have a nervous breakdown within the next few days,” she said. “Heavy objects will be thrown. _Knives_ will be thrown. I will probably say something nasty to one or more people, you included. I apologize in advance.”

“Apology accepted in advance,” Andronikos said, not bothering to hide the smirk in his voice.

She snorted, and they sat quietly for a while.

“This week has been an unmitigated disaster of truly astronomical proportions,” Phae said eventually, raising her head to look Andronikos in the eye. “And you know what?”

Andronikos raised an eyebrow and said, “What?”

“I’m fairly certain that the worst has yet to come.”


End file.
